Ennio Morricone to play one last time

The Italian composer and conductor Ennio Morricone is now 88 years old and he has decided to slow down a bit. He will play his last concert in Prague on Oct. 16 at O2 Arena with a 200 soloist, choir members and musicians including the Czech National Symphony Orchestra (CNSO). The concert is billed as the “Last Ever Show in Prague.”

Morricone has performed in Prague's O2 Arena four times already and once in Obecní dům back in 2011.

He has also recorded some film soundtracks here with the CNSO. These include Quentin Tarantino's most recent film, The Hateful Eight, and the 2013 film The Best Offer by director Giuseppe Tornatore.

In total, he has composed music for more than 500 TV shows and films and has sold over 70 million records worldwide.

His score for Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) is one of the top five best-selling original instrumental scores, with about 10 million copies sold. His score for The Mission (1986) was for a tine the world's best selling score.

His most famous works come from his spaghetti western soundtracks including his signature song “Ecstasy of the Gold” from the conclusion of the 1966 epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which starred Clint Eastwood.

He has composed for many different genres of film though, including Italian horror films of the 1970s, but he seldom plays these songs live. Other horror and sci-fi entries in his catalog include The Thing (1982), Wolf (1994) and Mission to Mars (2000).

His music also appeared on many arthouse and political films made in Italy in the 1970s such as An Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) and The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971).

More mainstream efforts included The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Cinema Paradiso (1989), Bugsy (1991) and In the Line of Fire (1993).

The erotic film Disclosure (1994) with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore took in the most at the box office, some $214 million, although his earlier works are not adjusted for inflation. Django Unchained (2012) took in $425.4 million, but the score was made from previously released material.

His carer goes back to the late 1940s when he began to write for theater. In the 1950s he delved into radio work and also composed and performed jazz and pop music. By 1961 he was composing scores for Italian comedies.

Over his career he has won an Honorary Academy Award in 2007 for “for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.” Clint Eastwood presented the award and also translated Morricone's acceptance speech, as Morricone has never learned English and only gives interviews in his native Italian. He won another Oscar in 2015 for Best Original Score for The Hateful Eight. He was nominated five other times.

He has also won three Golden Globes, four Grammy Awards and six BAFTAs, among many others during his long career.

The American Film Institute ranked his score for The Mission as one of the top 25 best American film scores of all time.